Breaking Point
Disclaimer: Not mine.
I'm really pleased you're all enjoying it so much. Thank you for all your kind words! I've almost finished typing it up and it's looking like there'll be 11 chapters in total.
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Chapter 7: Humiliation
Sunbeams began to dance on Ziva's eyelids as the sun rose the following morning, prompting her to awaken. As her eyes fluttered open, the only sensation in her body was that of pain. Pain everywhere, burning, aching, throbbing. Her shoulders were stiff and aching from being raised and held in the same position for so long; her neck was agony from the crick that had settled in while she had been asleep, and a sharp pain shot through it as she attempted to raise her head. Her wrists and ankles burned from the rope bindings. Various wounds across her body stung every time she moved even slightly. Her hips hurt, ached, throbbed from being locked in the same unnatural position for over twelve hours. The pounding in her head had not waned since the previous day; if anything, it was worse – dehydration, she suspected, along with repeated assaults. And she was determined to ignore the more distasteful aspects that came with being held prisoner. At least in Somalia she hadn't been tied up in such a restrictive way.
She had the sudden urge to laugh – never had she thought that she would find something positive from the horror that had been Somalia.
The door to her cell opened, and Tzabar and Mordechai ambled in, cruel, sadistic smirks on their faces. Mordechai allowed the whip to dangle from his hands and his roving eyes took in her body. Ziva flinched from the gaze, having no desire to look at the man any longer than absolutely necessary.
"You will be having a visitor shortly," Mordechai informed her. "He will be delighted to see his little girl."
"Not so little these days," remarked Tzabar, his hungry eyes fixed on her semi-exposed chest. Ziva fought back the urge to tell him to put his drooling tongue back in his mouth, knowing it would only intensify her punishment.
"Not speaking to me this morning?" demanded Mordechai, his eyes flashing malevolently.
Ziva felt a flash or rebelliousness rise up in her and she met his eyes defiantly. "I would not waste my breath on you!" she retorted.
Crack. She gasped involuntarily as the whip sliced across her legs, stinging, drawing blood. Tzabar chuckled and withdrew something from his pocket. The sunlight was so bright that Ziva had to squint to make out what the object was.
A camera. Probably one with a video recorder and microphone, too – they all seemed to come like that these days. She bit the inside of her mouth hard enough to make it bleed, in order to maintain a façade of indifference, to hide the fact that inside she was on the verge of her breaking point. Not even Saleem had gone this far, keeping a visual record of what was being done to her, presumably to be sent to NCIS to taunt her colleagues. Where did my father find these sick monsters? she wondered, well aware that their behaviour and sexual creepiness were not what she was used to in Mossad agents. If they even were Mossad.
Click. Click. Click.
She lifted her head to see them pointing the camera at her and leering at her like starving hyenas.
Then Tzabar handed the camera to Mordechai and crouched down beside her, his stinking breath hot on her face. Instinctively, Ziva recoiled, wrinkling her nose, and Tzabar chuckled.
"Lift her head up," ordered Mordechai. "Hand on her leg…Further up…" Tzabar grinned and squeezed her thigh, licking her cheek.
Ziva fought against the rising tears of absolute humiliation, but they were stronger than her, slipping down her face in hot salty trickles. The photos continued relentlessly, Mordechai instructing Tzabar into poses that became more and more humiliating and intimate. Ziva forced herself to hold it together outwardly and it was at least an hour before they finally stopped. 'At least', because Ziva had no means of telling exact times and her head pounded.
Mordechai returned the camera to Tzabar and crouched down in front of her, his trousers unzipped. "Make sure you use the video-recording setting," he instructed, eyes glittering. Tzabar was only too happy to oblige, his own excitement clearly visible to Ziva .She closed her eyes, squeezing them tightly to minimise her tears, and focused her mind on memories from her childhood, silently reciting the prayers she and her beloved sister had learned from their mother, again and again until blackness descended and she slipped into unconsciousness.
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A hand on her shoulder shook her violently awake and she squinted against the sunlight. With Tzabar and Mordechai stood a grey-haired man. He nodded in acknowledgement. "Ziva." There was no emotion in his voice.
"Eli," she replied coldly. "It has been some time."
The director of Mossad stepped forward. "Indeed."
"What is this about?"
He got very close to her and gently put a hand to her bruised and cut cheek and stroked it.
"Do not," hissed Ziva, jerking her head away, "touch me."
Eli sighed heavily. "Ziva, I am your Abba –"
She shook her head vehemently. "You no longer have any right to claim that name! There is only one man who will ever get that name from me and it is not you!"
Eli blinked and wobbled, uncertainty on his normally blank face. "Ziva dear, you're being very silly. Who on Earth else would you call that?"
"Who do you think?"
Eli's lip curled and he wrinkled his nose as comprehension dawned. "Of course. Leroy Jethro Gibbs. What, Tzabar, you think she was talking about Leon Vance?!"
Tzabar subsided, retreating behind Mordechai.
Ziva nodded defiantly. "If I ever get married, he will be the one to give me away." She stared intently into Eli's eyes. "Not you."
His eyes saddened, though Ziva knew better than to assume that it was genuine. "Ziva, you are my only remaining child –"
"I should have known: the guilt trip tactic," she shot back bitterly. "No, Eli, I will not be manipulated by you any more. You have used me too often in the past. I am not your agent any more and I am not your daughter. That Ziva is dead. She died in Somalia." She fought back the nausea that still washed over her whenever she thought about Somalia, even though she had been rescued more than two years ago. She wondered if there would ever be a time when it wouldn't happen.
Eli sighed, and his eyes and voice hardened. "We need you here. We need you back in Mossad."
"No. Never. That part of my life is over. Over. I work for NCIS and NCIS only now. I am an American citizen." She paused, confidence growing. "And the American government does not take kindly to foreign organisations kidnapping their federal agents and citizens. Even your relationship with Vance cannot make the situation very much better. I do not answer to you any more."
"Ziva, our country needs you –"
"No it does not! If it did, it would have been Israel and not America who rescued me from Somalia! I want nothing more to do with either you or Mossad. Ever. You are dead to me."
Eli stood swiftly and the hardness turned to ice. "Then we have nothing more to say to each other." He nodded at his men. "Our positions are clarified. Do not bring me here again." He strode out of the room without looking back.
Ziva did not feel any sadness – what she had said to him was just as true now as it had been just after Somalia. She had done her grieving a long time ago
Just as she had thought that, realisation swept over her in an ice-cold wave: without the Mossad director's supervision or limits, Mordechai and the others were free to do whatever they liked with her. She was just as much at the mercy of the Israelis now as any other, as she had been in Somalia. But Tim, Tony and Gibbs will find me. They will come.
She was snapped out of her thoughts by Tzabar grabbing her hair and jerking her head back, hard enough that he hit it on the wall. She cried out in pain, and Tzabar chuckled and placed wet, slobbering kisses down her neck. Ziva briefly caught a glimpse of his eyes glittering as he raised the camera, pointing it in her direction. She closed her eyes and in her head focused on the childhood prayers like she had done before in the desperate hope that it would take away some of what she was enduring.
That hope was shattered when five other men came into the room and the door was shut.
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TBC